Village Earth is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting sustainable, community-based development around the world by providing innovative training, consultation, appropriate technology information, and project support services. Village Earth was born in 1993 at an International Conference on Sustainable Village-Based Development in Fort Collins, Colorado, where more than 300 participants from 30 nations created the Consortium for Sustainable Village-Based Development (CSVBD) and gave it the mandate to implement and train others in the strategies discussed during the conference. Since its inception Village Earth has trained and consulted with hundreds of individuals and organizations in countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Bosnia, Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, Columbia, and elsewhere. Values We believe that communities must be empowered to access and manage the resources they need to be self-sufficient and sustainable. We trust and value the ability of local communities to shape and create their own vision for the future, as well as the path to move toward it. We believe that transparency and participatory decision-making is central to the goal of social justice and sustainability. We believe that working toward ecological sustainability must be a priority for all societies to ensure peace and prosperity for all peoples. We appreciate and respect the diversity and differences among our constituents and our collaborators.

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Around the globe, Village Earth is allying with communities that wish to determine their own futures. Through our empowerment approach, Village Earth works with communities as they direct their own path of change and work toward a sustainable future. Village Earth has allied with Lakota families on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota; the Shipibo Nation in Peru’s Amazon Basin; tribal communities in West Bengal, India; Mayan communities in Guatemala; and disadvantaged neighborhoods in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Learn more about our community alliances around the world.

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Watch as Global X intervies and found themselves, mesmerized and actually speechless. Listen to Professor Yunus as he tells the story of the first US$27 loan in a village of Bangladesh, the loan that launched the microfinance movement. Watch him as he recalls how surprised he was that it took so little money to free village women.

Aryavart Gramin bank, financing solar PV in India - 2008 Ashden Award winner

In Bangladesh, one of the least developed countries in the world, Microcredit from Grameen Bank has brought mobile phone services to the most isolated villages. Poor rural women now operate small businesses providing public call services to their communities.

There is a solar energy movement happening that must be shared.

It is in fact much more than solar energy but an empowering paradigm shift in education… allowing individuals to shine as they are. Regardless of poverty, illiteracy, race, language, nationality or gender. Talk about a level playing field. This program is doing such good works.

Please take a moment to review the video. It will inspire you to know that even in the poorest of villages, illiterate barefoot women are studying and becoming solar engineers and then empowering their village with their new skills. Amazing.

Peace,

Bruce

The Barefoot College, in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India, is empowering women to make a difference in their communities that would never have happened by themselves. The Barefoot College is a place of learning and unlearning. It’s a place where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher. It’s a place where NO degrees and certificates are given because in development there are no experts-only resource persons. It’s a place where people are encouraged to make mistakes so that they can learn humility, curiosity, the courage to take risks, to innovate, to improvise and to constantly experiment. It’s a place where all are treated as equals and there is no hierarchy.

“So long as the process leads to the good and welfare of all; so long as problems of discrimination, injustice, exploitation and inequalities are addressed directly or indirectly; so long as the poor, the deprived and the dispossessed feel its a place they can talk, be heard with dignity and respect, be trained and be given the tools and the skills to improve their own lives the immediate relevance of the Barefoot College to the global poor will always be there.”

Here’s the video…

“The rural poor must satisfy basic minimum needs like drinking water health educational employment etc. to improve their quality of life. Billions of dollars are spent every year in the name of the poor to provide these services. Colleges, research institutes, and funding organizations employ urban-trained, paper-qualified professionals to provide these services at tremendous costs. But there will always be a vested interest to keep the rural poor because thousands of jobs are at stake and poverty is big business.
The belief of the Barefoot College is that development programs do NOT need urban-based professionals because para-professionals already exist in the villages whose wisdom, knowledge and skills are neither identified, mobilized nor applied just because they do not have an educational qualification.
This belief was put into practice 33 years ago in all the development program dealing with improving the quality of life.”

Here is the founder of Barefoot College, Bunker Roy…

Skoll Foundation Visit to Barefoot College Tilonia